Re: Mini-GZG-ECC 2.5

>A gathering of gamers from New York, Missouri (formerly) and Maryland
>gathered this past Monday night at Noam Izenberg's house to partake of
some
>explosive decompression action.  The game featured Mark "I've
discovered
>fighters are easier to use than pulse torpedoes" Kotche and Noam
playing
>the NAC and NSL, respectively and Nick "if there aren't any FT gamers
in
>Missouri I'll move to Virginia" Caldwell and Jon Davis playing the ESU
and
>FSE, respectively.
>
>We were too tired to play a real scenario (Jon and I having braved two
>hours of Interstate 495 / I95 traffic just to get there), so we all
took
>600 points or so of ships from the fleet book, set them at two edges of
the
>"board" (Noam's floor) and went at it.

And a good time was had by all.  :)

>From the ESU/FSE side, there were two points of note in the ensuing
>slaughter.  One was that my pair of Voroshilokov (spelling, but you
know
>what I mean) battlecruisers managed to hold off two attack fighter
>squadrons and two heavy fighter squadrons for nearly the entire game,
>including one noteworthy kill by a class one battery which well and
truly
>vaporized the last fighter of one squadron.

Blast you, Nick Caldwell!!

>The other moment of glory came when Jon managed to land three missile
>salvoes dead onto a previously damaged NSL battlecruiser.  The exchange
>went something like this:
>
>Noam:	"Just tell me if the damage is greater than. . ."
>Jon:	"15. . .20. .  .28. . ."
>Noam:	"Never mind"

That was a very unpretty sight.  ;-)

>Despite this, the ESU went down to defeat, losing the entire squadron. 
The
>FSE fared slightly better, with one mission-killed ship ending the game
>drifting off the board without fire control, weapons, jump engines and
>engines but with two battlecruisers relatively undamaged.  I believe
the
>NSL lost only one battlecruiser, leaving another with armor stripped
off
>but with little damage and the NAC still had its carrier with only
minor
>damage.  All in all, a fairly decisive victory for the NAC/NSL.  It
>certainly showed that space superiority is a wonderful thing.

The FSE had two heavy destroyers and one battlecruiser, and lost
only one heavy destroyer.

I've written up the scenario (mostly because I found it to be a
potentially
tactically interesting situation  :) and you can find it for now at:

     http://scivax.stsci.edu/~kochte/s11.html

>Thanks to Noam for hosting us.  Next time, Indy goes down in flames --
Jon
>and I are working on an all pulse torpedo fleet for him to use!

An all-p-torp fleet, eh? I've heard something to the effect that if you
get a
million monkeys at a million typewriters one of them will unleash a
Shakespearean script, so be careful - I may hit with one of the p-torp
ships
multiple times over (of course the others will miss, but... :)

Mk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
"What's that on our sensors?"
"It's an, um, cloud, of starships."
"Cloud?"
"I know it's not a strictly correct military term, but I count
 eighty thousand three hundred and twenty two ships. I've told them
 that we're surrendering."

				   "Excession", by Iain M Banks